Penalty Flag for Republican Party

The eyes of the whole world were primarily focused on New York. Yet, as expected, surprise was out of the question there.

That Bill de Blasio would replace Michael Bloomberg, after 12 years of him shaping the city, had been known since the Democratic Party primary in September. From the very beginning, public advocate de Blasio was maintaining a huge lead over his Republican rival, former deputy mayor and head of the Metropolitan Transit Authority Joseph Lhota. De Blasio won by a margin of about 50 percent; thus, he will become the first Democratic mayor of New York City in 20 years when he takes office on Jan. 1. The last Democrat in the City Hall was David Dinkins. After him, the office was held by Rudolph Giuliani, a Republican, for eight years and for the next 12 years by Bloomberg, who in his first and second elections represented the Republican Party too, but ran as an independent for his third term. During these two decades, the city has experienced rapid development, and crime rates have fallen by as much as 74 percent.

In New York, no one believed in a miracle; Lhota himself can serve as a good example. Just 40 minutes after the polls closed, he publicly announced his defeat. “His success alone, however, commands my respect,” the Republican candidate said about de Blasio.

De Blasio’s victory may be considered a phenomenon. Only in June, he was fourth on the list of Democratic candidates seeking the party’s nomination. His campaign was based on slogans of narrowing the city’s inequality gap — the richest 1 percent of New Yorkers receive 40 percent of the city’s whole income — and ending the way the NYPD uses its “stop and frisk” policy.

The Virginia governor’s race was seen as a litmus test for the American political mood. Because it is a state bordering Washington, D.C., many of its residents experienced the most painful impact of the government shutdown. On the other hand, the public has recently been fed embarrassing information regarding failed implementation of the government’s flagship health insurance reform, Obamacare.

But despite all this, Virginia voters showed the penalty flag to Republicans. They broke a long, 36-year Virginia tradition of voting for a governor from the party opposite the sitting president and, after a brutal TV campaign, decided that Democrat Terry McAuliffe would became Virginia’s next governor. To a large extent, the result of the election was determined by votes cast in the Washington, D.C. suburbs, where many government employees live. McAuliffe’s camp did their best to present Republican Ken Cuccinelli, the current attorney general, as an extreme tea partier.

Yet the moderate Republican wing also has reasons to be pleased. In New Jersey, Chris Christie easily won re-election and solidified his status as the GOP’s most important 2016 presidential candidate.

In this mostly Democratic state, Christie yet again managed to win over voters by seeking compromise and cooperation with the political opponents. This attitude will probably make some conservative-populist tea partiers wary, but it gave him a decisive victory in the state and strengthened his future chances for winning the White House.